Bitcoin: Explain it like I'm 5?

[Jesse]

I'm trying to donate, but I cannot figure out bitcoin to save my life!  Is there a "Seriously, Explain It To Me Like I'm Five Years Old" tutorial anywhere---here on the forum or anywhere? I am tearing my hair out! 

I not only want to donate here, but I want to make several other purchases totally unrelated to this forum. More and more places are accepting Bitcoin, so I'd really like to learn how to use it.

However, Paxful (which seems to come highly recommended) is saying I can only buy $50.

Ok, I'd rather actually buy the amount that I want, but I could just buy $15. But then it says I can't access it for for 5-7 days. I assumed that meant if I buy the bitcoin, I have to wait 5-7 days to....move it into my wallet? Or to make a purchase with it? Except I don't seem to be able to buy it AT ALL. Do I have to start an account and then wait 5-7 days?

And THEN---because I apparently badly need to go to back to school---I can't figure out the wallet at all. I downloaded Electrum (again, comes highly recommended), but....now what do I DO with it??

I've been searching the forum. I've tried Googling for bitcoin tutorials, and everything I've found is over my head. I don't even know what they're talking about! 

And then somehow I wind up in Coinbase. WTF is Coinbase? How did I wind up here?

I am so confused....can someone please help a dummy over here? Thanks!

 

[Jesse]

Well, this is neat. Now it looks like I have $15 in Coinbase (whatever the fuck Coinbase is), but instead of 5 to 7 days, now it's saying I can't access it for 11 days? That is a weirdly specific number of days.... 

 

[2earls]

Hmm that is a longer than usual time period. 5 days is the usual for me. They will send you an email when it's available to trade "off of Coinbase" as they say.

When you get that email then go back to your Electrum wallet and copy your wallet address so you can paste it into Coinbase when you send your bitcoins to yourself. 

 

[2earls]

PS I had to make a few transactions before I really felt like I knew what I was doing. It gets easier every time and eventually you will wish all vendors took bitcoins because once you have it down its so much better than the other options. 

 

[Jesse]

Hmm that is a longer than usual time period. 5 days is the usual for me. They will send you an email when it's available to trade "off of Coinbase" as they say.

When you get that email then go back to your Electrum wallet and copy your wallet address so you can paste it into Coinbase when you send your bitcoins to yourself. 

PS I had to make a few transactions before I really felt like I knew what I was doing. It gets easier every time and eventually you will wish all vendors took bitcoins because once you have it down its so much better than the other options. 

Thanks for the encouraging words, because this is making me feel very stupid. It's still saying 11 days, which is strange, because it said 11 days yesterday. But maybe it's better I just start with $15 so I can figure out how this works. WHERE do I copy my wallet address into Coinbase to do this? When I bought them, I kept having to think up strings of random words, like the password-from-hell. But I don't think that's my wallet address; that's my password.

 

[AK caveman101]

Instead of waiting days you could use cash app, (connects to your bank) transfer money to it and buy Bitcoin off it, it takes 20 minutes to an hour to verify then send to your wallet.

 

[sweetmelissa589]

@Jesse   I feel your pain.. I'm just as confused as you, plus..  I'm on dis@bility, so I don't know how to work my way around that.  I'm on dis@bility for severe social anxiety, so being I talk to no one, I have no need for a phone, so a btc atm wouldn't work for me.  I'm at a stand still...  It's just too confusing for me.

 

[Jesse]

Instead of waiting days you could use cash app, (connects to your bank) transfer money to it and buy Bitcoin off it, it takes 20 minutes to an hour to verify then send to your wallet.

I don't even know what any of that means. I've not only never used bitcoin, I've never used a smartphone. I only vaguely know what an app is.

For some reason, Coinbase canceled my account and returned my $15 after my 11 days was almost up. One of the money transfer services appears to have blacklisted me. No idea if there's a connection, but they both happened at the same time.

Now to start again from scratch. If I ever figure it out, I promise to create the tutorial I wish I had right now!

 

[xBarNone]

HI I don't know if I can help but I'll try.

Bitcoin is a decentralized virtual currency that uses something called a blockchain, you don't need to understand how this works. You buy it from an exchange, another person or a bitcoin ATM. Most exchanges want lots of identification, and whether you can use that particular exchange depends on where you live and bank. Like I should be able to use cex.io but my bank says no. Had no problem with CoinMama, though. However you buy, transfer as soon as possible to your personal wallet.

You already have a Electrum wallet. I hope you wrote down your seed phrase, if not uninstall it and reinstall Electrum this time copying your seed phrase to a safe place.

Your Electrum wallet has all of your BTC (bitcoin) addresses in it. If you want to send BTC from an exchange (CoinBase) to your wallet, go to the receive tab. You'll see a long string of numbers with a symbol next to them that copies the address to your clipboard. Now you would paste this address into the space for the BTC address you want your exchange to send it to.

Sending BTC from Electrum is about the same except you will be presented with options that you will not understand. There is a slider that adjusts the fees you are willing to pay for the transfer. Electrum automatically sets it at the average so I just leave it there and my transactions get verified within 20 minutes usually. When it asks if it should be replaceable, choose yes and if your transaction is taking forever to get verified you can increase the fee you're willing to pay. You probably won't ever need to do any of that though. Now you just watch your wallet for the incoming or outgoing BTC and you'll see a green check mark once it's gotten two or more confirmations. Now it's good to spend.

HTH!

 

[sweetmelissa589]

Is there anyway for someone to donate 20$ to this forum for me?  I would pay beforehand through p@yp@l and even extra for your time, you name your pric3.  I'm not sure to go bout it though because you can't list email address's in forum and being I am not yet a sponser or VIP, I can't get any pm's?  Is there anyway around all this..lol?

 

[takingiteasy]

I-m making my way through the process for a donation but I-m totally put off by uploading my passport and such with address into coinbase. 

I thought this is all an anonymous system, instead I need to totally ID myself.

Is this unnecessary paranoia_ Where does the 100% protection come in? Via electrum?  

 

[takingiteasy]

P.S. I did the donation transfer from electrum. I hope it arrives. BTW: from the 100 euro I started with only 60 made it to BTC after all fees and whatnot. That, too, is normal? 40% fees. 

 

[Biskoinferno]

P.S. I did the donation transfer from electrum. I hope it arrives. BTW: from the 100 euro I started with only 60 made it to BTC after all fees and whatnot. That, too, is normal? 40% fees. 

To me that seems like alot .I'm not a coin expert though.I would use coinbase and transfer to a external wallet coinomi and my fee was never that much .It would be like a 10% for each of the services ......

 

[DoomKitty]

P.S. I did the donation transfer from electrum. I hope it arrives. BTW: from the 100 euro I started with only 60 made it to BTC after all fees and whatnot. That, too, is normal? 40% fees. 

uhm yeah that transfer fee is insane.  the fee changes depending on the amount being transferred but its usually very small (if you are using a segwit enabled wallet. Non-segwit wallets require MUCH higher fees).  Like if i transfer 200$ worth of btc I might pay a couple dollars in fees depending on how fast i want it to confirm.  

 

[takingiteasy]

Most payment systems charge 10% in the old economy, if two institutions in between it's 20%. 

Probably I did sub-optimize, just happy if it works, speaking of which: I hope my 60€ have arrived meanwhile.

Also another question: I changed my avatar to a more expressive image last week. It hasn't changed yet. is that part of the upgrade system or do I get it wrong?

 

[bdrc36]

@takingiteasy I paid $280usd for $235 worth of coin. This was at a local BTC Atm. The Atm got a 4% cut on top of the initial transaction fees. I noticed during my last transaction the btc atm will show a higher exchange rate at time of sale. So if btc was 10k yestersay and is 9k today.  The atm at time of purchase will charge yesterdays rates over the lower rate during the purchase . I found that very odd and frustrating. 

I will contact the Atm service and ask why is being done.  We all know the reason lol. They want to make more money off the fees. Kinda a crummy way of doing business.  Even worse, They froze my funds after I added money and finished the transaction.  I got a text right after  saying to email their customer support to answer some questions due to a "profile issue " and could take 24hrs for a response.  3 hrs later i get a respnse asking for the phone number i used to verify my id at the atm and a scan or my drivers license or valid Id. I complied and 2 hrs later they lifted the hold on funds and said it will be released in 15 min.  Took 2 hours to show incoming btc and then another 45min for block chain to verify.  

 

[DoomKitty]

 Sorry if this sounds harsh but losing 50+ dollars just to buy BTC is totally wild.   If you need ease and have a smartphone just use Cashapp.    It averages btc value over a short time period but doesn't charge fees and you will still be paying WAAAAAAAAAAAAY less than 50 dollars to get 235$ worth of coin.  

 

[Jesse]

HI I don't know if I can help but I'll try.

Bitcoin is a decentralized virtual currency that uses something called a blockchain, you don't need to understand how this works. You buy it from an exchange, another person or a bitcoin ATM. Most exchanges want lots of identification, and whether you can use that particular exchange depends on where you live and bank. Like I should be able to use cex.io but my bank says no. Had no problem with CoinMama, though. However you buy, transfer as soon as possible to your personal wallet.

You already have a Electrum wallet. I hope you wrote down your seed phrase, if not uninstall it and reinstall Electrum this time copying your seed phrase to a safe place.

Your Electrum wallet has all of your BTC (bitcoin) addresses in it. If you want to send BTC from an exchange (CoinBase) to your wallet, go to the receive tab. You'll see a long string of numbers with a symbol next to them that copies the address to your clipboard. Now you would paste this address into the space for the BTC address you want your exchange to send it to.

Sending BTC from Electrum is about the same except you will be presented with options that you will not understand. There is a slider that adjusts the fees you are willing to pay for the transfer. Electrum automatically sets it at the average so I just leave it there and my transactions get verified within 20 minutes usually. When it asks if it should be replaceable, choose yes and if your transaction is taking forever to get verified you can increase the fee you're willing to pay. You probably won't ever need to do any of that though. Now you just watch your wallet for the incoming or outgoing BTC and you'll see a green check mark once it's gotten two or more confirmations. Now it's good to spend.

HTH!

This was extremely helpful--thank you! I do have an Electrum wallet and my seed phrase. I've found a place to buy them with reasonable rates, provided I only transfer small amounts at a time. That's kind of a pain in the ass.

 

[xBarNone]

This was extremely helpful--thank you! I do have an Electrum wallet and my seed phrase. I've found a place to buy them with reasonable rates, provided I only transfer small amounts at a time. That's kind of a pain in the ass.

You're welcome!

Unfortunately I haven't had much luck finding an exchange I like and am able to actually use. Only Coinmama has worked for me, and their fees are the highest with a $60 minimum purchase.

I can't use Coinbase, Cex.io, and a few others I tried. I think it's related to my bank, but what exchange you can use also depends on where you live. I just signed up with Paxful, going to try them next time. It looks like it would be difficult for non-tech savvy people, though. If you haven't tried Cex.io, they're worth a shot.

Good luck!